Hi there. I'm Alyssa Adwarnie, and this is NPR's Book of the Day. The scholar behind such academic turned cultural touchpoints like critical race theory and intersectionality has a new memoir out called Backtalker. Kimberly Williams Crenshaw is a law professor and civil rights advocate who delves into her own past to illustrate why what she studies is so important.

She talks with NPR's Michelle Martin about why she believes progress in society is nearly always followed by a slide backwards.

Whether you know the name Kimberly Crenshaw or not, you probably know her work. That's because her work, as a foundational legal theorist of the concepts of intersectionality and critical race theory,

have become pivotal to some in understanding the forces that shape their lives,

and a political weapon in the hands of others, a symbol of liberal insanity.

And now Kimberly Crenshaw explores the origin story of these

theories in her own life, in a poignant new memoir. It's called Backtalker. And she's with us now.

Professor Crenshaw, thank you so much for joining us.

I am so thrilled to be in conversation with you, Michelle.

Your memoir is very plain spoken. Anybody can understand what you're saying in the stories that you tell.

You describe just incidents in your life,

starting from when you were a little kid,

that made you realize that your girlness and your race were connected.

It's hard to pick just one, but I'm going to pick the one from the

Fly Club at Harvard. It's like a social club, right? I mean, it's kind of like a frat, but not

really a frat. What happened? So our one friend was so proud of being one of the first

black members ever of the Fly Club as a celebration for the end of the semester,

he invited us to go. And my other friend and I, we weren't so sure that we really wanted to go

to the fly club, but we said, whatever happens, we're not going to take any disrespect.

So when we got to the fly club and we knocked on the door, our friend came out.

And our friend said, I just forgot to tell you that because Kim is a woman, she has to go through the back door.

We don't allow women to come through the front door.

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